For the Childhood Education Department, millions of dollars means helping others achieve their goals to finish school and better their education.

The Childhood Education Department has been awarded a five year $1.4 million dollar grant from the department of Health and Human Services.

Associate Professor of Childhood Education, Janet Young says that the program is very fortunate because they worked extremely hard to get that grant.

“We are very fortunate,” Young said. “It is a national-based grant, which is also very competitive to get so we are very lucky.”

With the grant that they have received, Young says that the vision was already in place last year prior to being awarded the grant.

“We already had a full vision of what we wanted to do with it and I just cannot wait to get started,” Young said.

The goal is to recruit current and prospective Head Start teachers in the El Camino and Compton service areas and to strengthen the program in both campuses.

Young says that the program has specific objectives in which they started on Tuesday after being approved on Monday.

The first objective is to formulize a partnership with local Head Start programs that serve Latino students and their families.

“EC has a very high Latino student population especially here in this program so we definitely want to aid Latino students to reach their goals,” Young said.

Another objective of the program is a need to recruit and enroll current Head Start and future Head Start teachers and programs leading to a bachelor’s degree.

Young says that according to the UTLA, (United Teachers of Los Angeles) pre-school qualifications are up and will be required to have a certain type of degree at a specific amount of time.

“By 2010 preschool teachers in the state of California will be required to have an associate’s degree. By 2016 preschool teachers will be required to hold a bachelor’s degree and a credential,” Young said.

She says that when she started teaching at EC, students were only aiming for an associate’s degree and were not considering a bachelor’s.

“When I first began teaching, very few students were interested in obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Now, we are seeing a significant rise in the number of students that wanted to pursue a bachelor’s and even a master’s degree,” Young said. “It’s very exciting.”

The program will be modeled after the successful TEP(Teacher Education Program) that has been in existence in EC for the past nine years. “The main focus of TEP is elementary, middle, and high school teachers. This grant program will focus solely on early childhood educators,” Young said.

Another objective of the program is to work extensively with students that require special need.

Students with ADD, autism, down syndrome, ESL students and other students who need assistance in learning will be aided by the program.

“Sometimes, in order to meet degree requirements of 120 units might be too much for these type of students,” Young said. “We will try to relieve some of that stress for them because we also want them to succeed in life.”